Turning The Corner

It seems like my back has taken a turn for the better. I woke up yesterday morning feeling a bit more flexible and had a decent trail run with Dave S. To have my legs feel light and snappy has been a rarity but I had to keep things under control on the trails as I really wanted to rip a couple of loops in Hartley but held back and did an abbreviated version and made the trip home just under an hour. A gorgeous day for a trail run.

This morning was the Grandma's Minnesota Mile. Four years strong, the race is growing and the field was as competitive as ever. For some reason the race organizers felt it was necessary to have the Masters that were chasing the $500.00 top prize run in the open elite wave. Wow, what an eye opening. I didn't want to take it out too hard but being close to 10+ seconds behind at the 400 meter mark made that difficult. I passed the 1/4 in 64 seconds! Just about 6 seconds too fast from what I was going to do. Once I rounded the corners past Fitgers I had the downhill segment to cruise and allow my breathing to catch up with me. I may have slowed too much, and ultimately cost me the top prize, but I managed to hit the half mark in 2:14. I missed the clock at 3/4 mile but I'm sure it was much the same and as I made my move to run strong up the final stretch I saw the clock tick past 4:29.... then I had to sprint with all I had left. I saw the clock last at 4:34, probably turning to 4:35 but my recorded time was 4:36.8 seconds. A new PR!

I came away from the race happy as I figured it would be very difficult to hit sub-4:40 as I had near zero confidence going into this race. The way I felt during the race was weird. I was running all I could and it felt a bit harder than tempo pace but the unfortunate thing was I had no other gear. I couldn't find that deep, low end fast turnover I needed to catch the next guy. I'm sure it's from the lack of long runs and workouts. The next two weeks will hopefully get me some more strength going into TCM. I plan no true taper, just a few easy days prior to the race. I need all the training runs I can get in.

Saturday:

52:30 6.6 miles

Sunday:

4 miles warm up. 1 mile race

5 miles total

Weeks Total: 38 miles (6 runs)

Years Total: 1923.4 miles